We are all Polanyians now, indeed! I agree with your point that this often cited but seldomly read book is at its core extremely insightful but suffers from some strange shortcomings (but I guess many great works are like that?).
On the methodological issues, I believe they can mostly be explained as Polanyi straining to demarcate his substantivist economic theory from those he saw as rivals, like orthodox Marxism. The substantivism comes through much more in his later work on pre-capitalist societies and I think shows the shortcomings of the Polanyian perspective; to oversimplify, he tries to show that markets in pre-capitalist societies were "not real markets", which I don't buy. Polanyi's substantivism isn't quite as over the top as Moses Finley, but I think I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's not considered all that convincing these days.
Thank you for this surprise-review. Just yesterday I was considering bying this edition on Amazon - listing in the Modern Classics is for me a sufficient recomendation.
This important and timely discussion about markets and societies is unfortunatelly burried under the simplistic dichotomy of "free market" vs. "planned economy". The notion that an unregulated market is not automatically free, but potentially the oposite of it - is for some reason very hard to utilize politically.
On the other hand, the World of today is indeed more complicated than Polnayi's Britain of 1944, so more patience might be suitable.
I realize this is long after the train has left the station, but for a long time I wanted to teach a course on the intellectual response to WWII -- the sweeping books that came out in the 40s in response to the war's challenge to social theory and postwar policy. TGT would be on the reading list, of course, along with The Road to Serfdom, Mannheim's Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, and perhaps also The Second Sex, since fascism's gender aspect was so vivid. I would love to have something representing the anti-colonial movement, since the post-WWII years were so pivotal, but it's hard to think of a single work that captures that moment. (The Origins of Totalitarianism misses the 1949 cutoff, by the way.)
It should be a great course! The anti-colonial movement was still relatively young. But Ayme Cesaire, Senghor and a bit later Fanon were writing around the same time, although I do not know whether they would make a cut if you use 1949. In the 1920-30s, M N Roy.
Anti-colonialism was in between stages, no? Perhaps in response to the truncated Wilsonian post-WWI hopes, there was a flourishing of thought in the 20s and 30s, like Roy. And then there was the wave of agitation and reflection in the 50s (add Memmi to your list), but if you have the somewhat artificial decade-of-the-forties frame, you might be out of luck on this front. I actually taught at a school where a course like this was feasible, but it was obvious there would be minimal student interest.
To my recollection the book was created from a set of lectures Polanyi gave at Bennington College, and wasn't written (or edited) as a really coherent and consistent single book. I'd recommend Gareth Dale's 2010 analysis of most all of Polanyi's writings, including earlier ones from Vienna and those on the Poor Laws for in many ways a better account of his thought. https://books.google.ie/books/about/Karl_Polanyi.html?id=A_EeAQAAMAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
That may explain some repetition & also a rather unclear ordering of chapters. It is interesting that you mentioned this because the repetitions and at times overwrought character of discussion reminded me of Sen's On inequality which is also a series of lectures.
I must be one of the few readers of TGT that wasn't very impressed. Everyone I knew thought it was brilliant, but nothing in it persuaded me. Yes, wages really do need to be regulated for a lot of reasons, but others make that argument more powerfully. I agree that land use and tenure should also be regulated, mainly for ecological reasons, but I didn't see a sufficiently concrete argument in Polanyi that would point us to *how* that regulation should be designed. And money? Well, money has always been subject to political interventions; the real question is about credit, and I didn't find much insight in Polanyi on that front. Meanwhile, after reading Polanyi I stumbled on what seemed to me to be a far deeper analysis of laissez-faire, P. S. Atiyah's Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract. The funny thing is that I am much closer to Polanyi's politics than Atiyah's (he's no lefty), but the latter is the one who really gets to the heart of the matter. Atiyah's is one of just a few books that significantly changed how I viewed the world. It's almost 50 years old by now, and I don't know if anyone's updated him on the basis of new scholarship.
Great review and penetrating critique; I couldn't pin my own dissatisfaction with his writing in places. And, Yes, we are all Polanyians now, except for the majority of mainstream economists who might have not even heard of Polanyi. We economists (I am a member of the tribe) still teach our students almost solely about markets, with everything else being a "distortion", including almost half of the GDP of rich countries. There is still no such thing as "society" in our world.
Very helpful analysis on Polanyi's 1944 "The Great Transformation"! I have a copy by Farrar & Rinehart, New York, Toronto, apparently printed in 1944 and with the message "This book has been manufactured in accordance with paper conservation orders of the War Production Board." I'm going to print off your post, fold it and keep it in the book. Thanks!
Very good point Perry! Cheap paper and vegetable inks are likely to fade 🙄. Once in a long while when perusing an old book, I come across a note in a margin or an underline from my Dad, or my paternal grandmother. Such notes are still there because they're done in red grease pencil or black graphite pencil. And a couple of times, one finds a tree leaf 🍁
I'm delighted to see your review, having just read the book myself for the first time, and in this edition. It certainly is a delight in how it is written, informative in its insight, but also a perfect demonstration of how to analyse history and the economy. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on it.
We are all Polanyians now, indeed! I agree with your point that this often cited but seldomly read book is at its core extremely insightful but suffers from some strange shortcomings (but I guess many great works are like that?).
On the methodological issues, I believe they can mostly be explained as Polanyi straining to demarcate his substantivist economic theory from those he saw as rivals, like orthodox Marxism. The substantivism comes through much more in his later work on pre-capitalist societies and I think shows the shortcomings of the Polanyian perspective; to oversimplify, he tries to show that markets in pre-capitalist societies were "not real markets", which I don't buy. Polanyi's substantivism isn't quite as over the top as Moses Finley, but I think I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's not considered all that convincing these days.
Agree w/ all you wrote.
Thank you for this surprise-review. Just yesterday I was considering bying this edition on Amazon - listing in the Modern Classics is for me a sufficient recomendation.
This important and timely discussion about markets and societies is unfortunatelly burried under the simplistic dichotomy of "free market" vs. "planned economy". The notion that an unregulated market is not automatically free, but potentially the oposite of it - is for some reason very hard to utilize politically.
On the other hand, the World of today is indeed more complicated than Polnayi's Britain of 1944, so more patience might be suitable.
I realize this is long after the train has left the station, but for a long time I wanted to teach a course on the intellectual response to WWII -- the sweeping books that came out in the 40s in response to the war's challenge to social theory and postwar policy. TGT would be on the reading list, of course, along with The Road to Serfdom, Mannheim's Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, and perhaps also The Second Sex, since fascism's gender aspect was so vivid. I would love to have something representing the anti-colonial movement, since the post-WWII years were so pivotal, but it's hard to think of a single work that captures that moment. (The Origins of Totalitarianism misses the 1949 cutoff, by the way.)
It should be a great course! The anti-colonial movement was still relatively young. But Ayme Cesaire, Senghor and a bit later Fanon were writing around the same time, although I do not know whether they would make a cut if you use 1949. In the 1920-30s, M N Roy.
Anti-colonialism was in between stages, no? Perhaps in response to the truncated Wilsonian post-WWI hopes, there was a flourishing of thought in the 20s and 30s, like Roy. And then there was the wave of agitation and reflection in the 50s (add Memmi to your list), but if you have the somewhat artificial decade-of-the-forties frame, you might be out of luck on this front. I actually taught at a school where a course like this was feasible, but it was obvious there would be minimal student interest.
Thank you very much Branko for an excellent analysis I’ve never read Polanyi but your writing makes think I should.
To my recollection the book was created from a set of lectures Polanyi gave at Bennington College, and wasn't written (or edited) as a really coherent and consistent single book. I'd recommend Gareth Dale's 2010 analysis of most all of Polanyi's writings, including earlier ones from Vienna and those on the Poor Laws for in many ways a better account of his thought. https://books.google.ie/books/about/Karl_Polanyi.html?id=A_EeAQAAMAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
That may explain some repetition & also a rather unclear ordering of chapters. It is interesting that you mentioned this because the repetitions and at times overwrought character of discussion reminded me of Sen's On inequality which is also a series of lectures.
I must be one of the few readers of TGT that wasn't very impressed. Everyone I knew thought it was brilliant, but nothing in it persuaded me. Yes, wages really do need to be regulated for a lot of reasons, but others make that argument more powerfully. I agree that land use and tenure should also be regulated, mainly for ecological reasons, but I didn't see a sufficiently concrete argument in Polanyi that would point us to *how* that regulation should be designed. And money? Well, money has always been subject to political interventions; the real question is about credit, and I didn't find much insight in Polanyi on that front. Meanwhile, after reading Polanyi I stumbled on what seemed to me to be a far deeper analysis of laissez-faire, P. S. Atiyah's Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract. The funny thing is that I am much closer to Polanyi's politics than Atiyah's (he's no lefty), but the latter is the one who really gets to the heart of the matter. Atiyah's is one of just a few books that significantly changed how I viewed the world. It's almost 50 years old by now, and I don't know if anyone's updated him on the basis of new scholarship.
Great review and penetrating critique; I couldn't pin my own dissatisfaction with his writing in places. And, Yes, we are all Polanyians now, except for the majority of mainstream economists who might have not even heard of Polanyi. We economists (I am a member of the tribe) still teach our students almost solely about markets, with everything else being a "distortion", including almost half of the GDP of rich countries. There is still no such thing as "society" in our world.
Very helpful analysis on Polanyi's 1944 "The Great Transformation"! I have a copy by Farrar & Rinehart, New York, Toronto, apparently printed in 1944 and with the message "This book has been manufactured in accordance with paper conservation orders of the War Production Board." I'm going to print off your post, fold it and keep it in the book. Thanks!
Thank you! Very kind of you.
It is obviously a very precious first edition.
Just make sure the Substack is printed out in accordance to FSC, recycled paper, and ink quality that can last another 80+ years!
Very good point Perry! Cheap paper and vegetable inks are likely to fade 🙄. Once in a long while when perusing an old book, I come across a note in a margin or an underline from my Dad, or my paternal grandmother. Such notes are still there because they're done in red grease pencil or black graphite pencil. And a couple of times, one finds a tree leaf 🍁
I'm delighted to see your review, having just read the book myself for the first time, and in this edition. It certainly is a delight in how it is written, informative in its insight, but also a perfect demonstration of how to analyse history and the economy. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on it.
Brilliant and important discussion